CONSERVATION AREA STATEMENT - Stroud District Council

CONSERVATION AREA STATEMENT - Conservation Area No7: FRAMPTON ON SEVERN
The appearance of the Oval itself is entirely derived from the Garden City Movement’s romantic vision of estates full
of cottagey buildings based on old English traditions. The design of the houses owes everything to the influence of
Arts and Crafts architects, such as Lutyens and Voysey. Although very watered down and simplified, the Oval’s
repeating gables, with their paired windows, the steep roof pitches and tall chimneys, are all typical Arts and Craft
references, as are the arched heads of the passageways through to the gardens.
The original Arts and Crafts and Garden City Movements had put emphasis on the high quality materials and good
craftsmanship in their buildings. This ideology, of course, was prohibitively costly for local authorities, and the quality
of the materials and methods of construction were downgraded to an extent.
Economic crisis, spiralling inflation and resulting shortages in the 1920s, brought about changes in modern building
techniques and necessary experiments with new materials, as well as a revival of traditional ones, such as unfired
bricks. The era saw the widespread introduction of metal windows, designed by the firm of Francis and W.F. Crittall,
as an alternative to hard to source wooden frames. These became standard in local authority housing.
The 1930s’ Oval inherited the use of many of the new materials. Frampton on Severn is largely brick built, but the
bricks of the Oval have nothing of the colour variations found in the locally made product, being a rather bright, uniform
orangey-red. Allied with the plain tile roofs, this is very much a pleasantly rusty- coloured enclave.
The Crittall windows have unfortunately for the appearance of the buildings, now been replaced with UPVc, which
can in no way truly reflect the fine lines of the originals. However, the wholesale, single phase replacement of the
windows by Stroud District Council has ensured that the uniform look of the terraces has been maintained, and the
new windows have the benefit of being non- standard designs that still hint at something of the 1930’s vision.
Stroud District Council
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